Superintendent Ahart on the State’s Proposed Education Budget
The Iowa State Capitol lit up at night.
The Iowa House of Representatives held a hearing last night on the state’s proposed education budget, which includes only a 1.25% increase in allowable growth for schools.
Below is a copy of the statement submitted by Superintendent Tom Ahart on the need for greater support of our schools to meet the educational needs of a diverse student body.
Click here to learn more about the legislative priorities of Des Moines Public Schools.
STATEMENT BY DR. AHART ON BUDGET PROPOSAL
My name is Dr. Tom Ahart and I am superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools. On behalf of Iowa’s largest provider of public education, it is my honor to represent our 33,000 students, our 5,000 employees and the thousands of parents and guardians in our state’s capitol city who count on us to provide a great education.
I want to thank members of the legislature for holding this hearing early in your session. In many ways, education is the most critical issue you debate here, year in and year out. It is the issue that – directly or indirectly – determines if we succeed or fail on every issue, opportunity or challenge we face.
This discussion comes at a critical time for Iowa as our schools face many changes. For example, school districts large and small across Iowa are educating more and more students whose first language is not English. In Des Moines, our students represent 88 different nations. And nearly one out of five of our students are English Language Learners. In some Iowa school districts that percentage is more than half.
Frankly, the diversity of our student body is a great asset to our school district. It is something we embrace and celebrate. Yet, as the needs of our students change, we cannot succeed as a state and as school districts if we fund our schools on the cheap, acting as if a one-size-fits-all approach to education will lead to improvement.
The fact is our state is in an economically strong position. We enjoy one of the top GDPs in the nation and are among the top 10 states when it comes to both the reserve funds in state coffers and in personal income growth. Iowa is the envy of many states.
But while our economy, and our state coffers, have recovered from the economic downturn our education system has not.
Iowa is just 35th in the nation when it comes to spending per pupil, more than $1,600 below the national average. This proposed budget currently before you will do nothing to close this gap, or make up for recent economic downturns and across-the-board budget cuts. We can and must do better.
Related to this, there needs to be greater transparency with funding for Iowa’s Teacher Leadership & Compensation program. While Des Moines and many districts are excited about the potential of the TLC initiative, we need transparency in how its funding will work so we can plan effectively. If TLC funds are being backed out of new funding, it is going to confound our efforts to plan for, and achieve, improvements.
In closing, for many years Iowa rightfully proclaimed we were number one in education. Today, we aim to reclaim that position. But rhetoric alone will not get us there. Forcing school districts to get improved results with fewer resources is not a formula for success. Our state is in a unique position to put its money where its mouth is to support our schools. As leaders of Iowa, I urge you to do better than the proposed budget before you, and develop one that will truly help every student succeed in the classroom and beyond.
